When families struggle

Chicago Tribune editorial board member Steve Chapman discusses how the strength of Chicago's families affects all other spheres of urban life.

Chicago Tribune editorial board member Steve Chapman discusses how the strength of Chicago's families affects all other spheres of urban life.

"So we can talk all we want here in Washington about issues like education and health care and crime; we can build good schools; we can put money into creating good jobs; we can do everything we can to keep our streets safe — but government can't keep our kids from looking for trouble on those streets. Government can't force a kid to pick up a book or make sure that the homework gets done. Government can't be there day in, day out, to provide discipline and guidance and the love that it takes to raise a child. That's our job as fathers, as mothers, as guardians for our children." — President Barack Obama, June 21, 2010

It's no secret what parents in solid, prosperous families do to give their children every chance of success in life. From the start, they strive to see that the children are safe and well-fed. They read to them, play with them, instruct them, discipline them and let them know they are loved.

When the kids start school, these mothers and fathers meet with teachers, go to school events and insist that homework be completed. They ferry youngsters to soccer practices and piano lessons. They keep them off the streets. They encourage activities in and out of school that prepare them to be responsible, self-sufficient adults.

But there are no guarantees. A child with the most involved and devoted set of parents may drop out of high school, go to jail, abuse drugs or end up unemployed. The world is full of dangers, and a solid family can't protect against them all.

Imagine, though, how much more immediate and potent those hazards are for children who don't have the benefit of strong, well-functioning families. Actually, you don't have to imagine. In Chicago, as in every other city, many kids grow up without two parents. Some young people never know their fathers, and their mothers may have children by other men. Families often disintegrate — or never form in the first place.

For a child, that can make all the difference in the world. It can mean poverty. It can invite abuse or neglect. It can hinder learning. It can mean getting on a wrong track that is very hard to escape. A bad start is often a lifelong impediment. Not that early disadvantage translates to determinism and doom; many people begin with very little yet rise and thrive. They are, though, defying bleak odds.

This attention to deteriorating family structures is not new. In 1965, a U.S. Department of Labor official named Daniel Patrick Moynihan created a long-running national debate with a report arguing that "the family structure of lower class Negroes is highly unstable, and in many urban centers is approaching complete breakdown." He went on: "In essence, the Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure which ... seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole, and imposes a crushing burden on the Negro male and, in consequence, on a great many Negro women as well."

The Tribune's Jessica Reynolds spoke with four Chicago single mothers. (Tribune Illustrations by Rick Tuma)

Moynihan's diagnosis, controversial a half-century ago, became accepted wisdom. But at the time, the proportion of African-American children born out of wedlock was 24 percent. Today, nationally, it's 72 percent.

Nor is the phenomenon unique to African-Americans. Among Hispanics, 53 percent of births are to unmarried women. For non-Hispanic whites, the rate is 29 percent — higher than the 24 percent rate among African-Americans that so alarmed Moynihan in the mid-1960s.

Fact: In Chicago,51 percent of all children live in single-parent households.

What are the consequences? Phillip Jackson, founder and executive director of the Black Star Project, minces no words. "The most important reason parts of the South and West sides are the way they are is the breakdown of the family," he says. "You can't have a strong society without strong families."

The data bear him out. "Poverty rates in female-headed families now hover around 40 percent," Ron Haskins of the liberal Brookings Institution recently wrote. "By contrast, children living in married-couple families have poverty rates that have been as low as 7 percent in recent years."

Poverty is but one side effect. Writes analyst Robert Rector of the conservative Heritage Foundation: "When compared to children in intact married homes, children raised by single parents are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems; be physically abused; smoke, drink, and use drugs; be aggressive; engage in violent, delinquent, and criminal behavior; have poor school performance; be expelled from school; and drop out of high school."

This is not because single parents are generally unloving, incompetent or uninvolved in their children's lives. It's because rearing kids, a tough task even for two parents, is far more formidable for only one. And stress at home doesn't exist in isolation. Yes, it can lead to economic hardship, but it can also be the result of such hardship. Otis Moss III, senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on the Far South Side, says, "Men with jobs have a proclivity to be in stable households" — and when employment opportunities grow scarce, stable households grow scarce too.

The effects of joblessness abound. "Work gives people meaning," says Moss. "Men unable to provide are not viewed as men." If they have children, particularly out of wedlock, they may be unable or unwilling to provide financial support to those kids — and the mothers then may shut them out of their lives.

Children without fathers are at higher risk for all sorts of reasons. Boys and girls alike may suffer from not growing up with a model of how a man should behave. Based on his experience working with inmates, Moss says most of them have no relationship with their fathers. Ex-convicts, in turn, tend not to be good fathers or mothers themselves. Each generation's failures put the next one at a huge disadvantage. The disadvantages breed despair.

How to stop this vicious circle, which has such deep historical and economic roots? There are many admirable efforts to promote responsible fatherhood and provide mentoring to at-risk youths. One initiative, called Becoming a Man — Sports Edition and funded through the University of Chicago Crime Lab, has provided "social-cognitive skill development through in-school and after-school programming" to disadvantaged young males and managed to reduce violent-crime arrests by 44 percent.

Better schools, too, would give kids the tools they need to find jobs in today's demanding economy. Greater emphasis on nurturing small businesses on dying streets could attract employers to provide those jobs. Reducing crime would help build stronger neighborhoods and retain families that may otherwise move to suburbia. The vicious cycle could become a virtuous one.

But the first step in solving a problem is recognizing it. Confronting the collapse of family structure risks offending those who think that pointing out the perils of single-parent households amounts to blaming the victims, or that noting the value of fathers demeans the sacrifices of mothers.

The point, though, is not that mothers aren't vital or that single-parent households can't overcome the special challenges they face. The point is that a stable, two-parent home, on average, confers tangible advantages. When single-parent homes become the norm, as they have in many neighborhoods, children lack protections that can be critical. "There is no margin for error in their lives," Obama has said — speaking as someone who was brought up largely by a single mother and barely knew his biological father.

Without acknowledging the importance of strong families, and without steps to create more of them, Jackson of the Black Star Project warns, "Nothing else that we do, in education, in economics, in incarceration, is going to work."

If, conversely, we can build stronger families, every other problem Chicago faces will be far easier to solve.